While people back home in the Pacific Northwest are battening down the hatches for a storm blowing in off the Pacific, we’re in Tucson wearing sun screen, hats, and bug spray doing some wintertime planting. Which is to say, the menfolk are doing the planting, and I’m overseeing same from the shade of the back patio. In my experience having a third person out doing the plant placement is a recipe for marital dis-harmony. Where Bill wants plants to go and where I want them to go aren’t necessarily the same places, but the real point is that they go somewhere, and I trust we’ll both be happy with the final result.

When we bought this place in 2001, the back backyard was a jungle of overgrown cholla and dead prickly pear. Last year a landscape crew spent six weeks clearing out the mess and creating rock-lined graveled walking paths.  It’s beautiful. I have a standard 1500 step lap back there that gets the stepping job done in short order.

But once the weeds and junk plants went away, our cactus garden was short on … well … cactus.  So today, we are in the process of rectifying that. In a manner not dissimilar to carrying coals to Newcastle, we are bringing cactus to our cactus garden.  Cactus from … well  … Home Depot.  A previous owner, left a jumble of clay pots out on the back forty.  Those are now being deployed to the back garden with baby cactus.  By the time I’m doing the laps on Friday, things will be different back there.  I can hardly wait.

Our neighborhood here in Tucson has a newsletter.  Last spring before we came down here, Bill read the newsletter and told me, “No walking out on the street with the doggies. Too many coyotes.  Too many javelina.”  My mental response was as follows:  Sure there are—right in the middle of Tucson?  No way!

But still, in the name of marital harmony and muttering under my breath, I’ve complied, not walking out on the street and leaving the puppies in the interior yard when I go walking in the back.  And then, a couple of days ago, while walking out there, I noticed something new—some piles of animal poop that hadn’t been there before.  

If you are a dog owner, the relative size of poop becomes important to you.  For instance, I can tell you with the voice of experience that trying to flush frozen Irish Wolfhound poop is a sure fire way of needing an emergency visit from the local roto-rooter guy.  Cleaning up small poop is one of the real advantages of having small dogs.  

So I noticed the poop in the yard.  Let’s say it weighed in on the scale of a 80 pound golden retriever. There was some there earlier this week in another spot, and a new set in the original spot this morning. Yes, I know. When I’m out walking, I’m supposed to be thinking creative thoughts. So far that isn’t really working for me.

But back to the poop report.  This is larger by far than anything that might have been left behind by the feral tabby cat who was a regular nighttime visitor last year and who divested our yard of the covey of quail who had hung around for more than a decade.

Then yesterday in broad daylight, when we were on our way to take some visitors back to the airport, we passed by a threesome of coyotes nonchalantly strolling through our neighborhood.  They were not the least bit concerned that we were driving past them with the windows open and taking photos with our phones. In fact, one of them was so completely unimpressed by our presence that he stopped to … well … take a dump.  Right there.  In public.

On our way back from the airport, I made Bill stop so the resident animal poop expert could take a look at what was there.  I can tell you that fresh coyote poop is much smaller than the golden retriever-sized poop in our backyard.

I don’t know what’s hanging out in our backyard after the sun goes down, but whatever it is, I don’t want to tangle with it.  I won’t be prowling around out there in the dark, and neither will the puppies.

Yesterday evening, after seeing the coyotes out on the street, we came home and something entirely untoward happened.  I told Bill he was absolutely right when he said I shouldn’t take the dogs walking out on the street.  Yes, I came right out and said those very difficult words: You were right and I was wrong.

Bill opened his computer and marked it on his calendar as a red-letter day.

Believe me, that’s something that hardly ever happens!